Private Collection
© Estate of Alfred Cohen 2020

The Best Room, a painting of the Cohens’ sitting room in Wighton, demonstrates the ‘intricate pattern of complementary colours’ that critic Tony Warner admired. The patterns in the furnishings are foregrounded, part of a complex repetition of patterns throughout: they are echoed in the patterns that the painter sees in the bookcase and the fire-guard – and of course in the paintings, including his own Crown Imperial (1982) over the mantelpiece. It becomes a picture about how we make patterns, both as we decorate the spaces we live in and when we make art.
The composition was also produced as one of Cohen’s most successful screenprints, made with master printmaker Kip Gresham.